A Russian T-72 battle tank crew take up a position in Kursk region in readiness for combat with invading Ukrainian mechanized units. Moscow insists the effort to defend its Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions from a widening Ukrainian ground incursion is a “counter-terrorism operation.” Photo courtesy Russian Defense Ministry Handout/EPA-EFE
Aug. 12 (UPI) — Russia’s western Belgorod region on Monday became the second region forced to evacuate residents in the face of a widening ground offensive by Ukrainian forces, now in its seventh day.
Belgorod Governor Viacheslav Gladkov said in a video post on social media that about 14,000 people in the region’s Krasnoyaruzhsky District near the border with Ukraine, would be evacuated due to “alarming” maneuvers by Ukrainian armed forces on the border in Krasnoyaruzhsky District.
“In the interest of the lives and health of our population, we’re starting to move people who live in Krasnoyaruzhsky to safer locations,” said Gladkov who insisted the decision was a precaution and that he was confident Russian troops would be able to fend off the threat.
“Transport has been sent to the district”.
The district in the northwest of Belgorod region is about 38 miles southeast of Sudzha in the Kursk region where the Ukrainian incursion into Russia began Tuesday, with the district capital, Krasnaya Yaruga, just 10.5 miles from Kolotilovka village on the border with Ukraine.
Russian military bloggers said a Ukrainian army unit attacked Kolotilovka on Sunday, the BBC’s Russian service reported on its social media account, adding that Gladkov had instructed villagers to leave on Friday ahead of the operation.
The border checkpoint between Kolotilovka and Pokrovka on the Ukrainian side was functioning as the lone humanitarian corridor of the entire Russian-Ukrainian border until Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced a temporary 10-day suspension Wednesday.
To the north in the Kursk region, Belovsky district head Nikolay Volobuev in a post on social media urged residents living in areas near the border with Ukraine to leave amid a “very tense” situation sparked by the arrival of Ukrainian units in the district on Sunday, telling them to make their way to designated pick-up points from where they would be evacuated by bus.
The latest evacuations come four days after Kursk governor Alexey Smirnov ordered the evacuation of thousands of Kursk residents from areas surrounding the original incursion point, setting up temporary centers to house them, bringing the number of people ordered to flee the Ukrainian advance to at least 90,000.
Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed a Ukrainian military incursion in two districts of the Kursk region but said it had thwarted efforts to penetrate deeper into the region with reinforcements and reserves deployed along the border and by attacking the enemy from the air.
“Over the course of 24 hours, actions by the Battlegroup North units and arriving reserves, strikes by army aviation and unmanned aerial vehicles, and artillery fire in the areas of the settlements of Tolpino, Zhuravli, and Obshchy Kolodez prevented attempts of the enemy mobile groups to break through deep into Russian territory using armored vehicles,” the state-run TASS news agency reported the ministry as saying.
The ministry claimed Ukraine had lost 230 troops and 38 armored vehicles, including three U.S.-made Stryker armored fighting vehicles, in a 24-hour period Saturday through Sunday, and 1,350 servicemen and 29 tanks in total since it launched its incursion on Aug. 6.
It said Mi-28NM army helicopters had hit Ukrainian troops and armored and motorized military equipment using “unguided air-borne missiles against detected targets” near Kursk’s border with Ukraine.
Reconnaissance afterward showed all the designated targets were successfully destroyed, the ministry added.